The Zero Hour

by Ryan Schow

  I open the garage door and back the Cutlass out into the alley. There is something about the sound of that feisty Detroit motor that has me feeling alive. This has become the kind of car you run over people with. The kind of car a real hard ass drives. This is a take-no-crap-from-anyone kind of car and I love every last inch of it.

  Rumbling down the alley with my gun in my lap, I could care less who hears me right now. Come and get me…

  Inside of two blocks I find half a dozen abandoned sedans. They all have gas. I fill the Cutlass first, then I top off the five gallon container one last time and put it in the front seat foot well.

  The drive back home is short, and thank God because nothing is worse than the taste of gasoline in your mouth. Back home with a bottle of water, I brush my teeth, gargle some mouthwash to get the noxious taste out of my mouth, then head upstairs and lay down for a nap.

  When I wake up, it’s to the sounds of screaming. Flying out of bed, feeling out of sorts, not sure what’s happening or even where I am, I rush to my bedroom window overlooking my backyard and Dirt Alley. Tearing the curtains aside, an orange sky greets me, one that’s quickly growing dark but isn’t so dark that I miss the nightmare scene unfolding below.

  My senses are quick to return.

  Across the alley, barging out of the back of the girl’s house—the girl I warned to be careful several days back—are the five deviants. One of these monstrous turds, he’s dragging the blonde out of her house by her hair. To her credit, the girl is kicking and screaming, clawing at her abductor’s hands and cursing violently.

  All five of these creeps find this amusing, judging by the riot of laughter. Two of the guys crossing the backyard are even whooping and hollering like a bunch of drug-addled morons. They then count to three like a pair of drunk frat boys and charge the fence, driving into it shoulder-first. The entire thing topples and both guys go down laughing. They climb slowly to their feet and start jumping up and down on the wood, stomping the fallen fence until it’s all but flattened.

  The guy with the blonde, he’s still dragging her by the hair. He’s still weathering her attacks. He’s still kicking at her when she gets in a good shot not because he’s mad but because sooner or later he’s going to be the fight out of her.

  My pulse doubles, then triples. Something in me kicks into high gear and screams that I do something.

  “You motherfu—”

  At the fence, the guy with the girl drags her over splintered wood and exposed nails. She’s wailing now, screaming for help while I’m up here, squirming in the dark. In my head, I’m formulating a plan, but the truth is, I’m trying to figure out how to start this fight and not end up in the same position as she’s in right now.

  I know what I said about calmer minds prevailing, and how there was no room for calm minds here, but I take that back.

  Reeling myself in, I try to focus.

  To think…

  Now that they’ve got her in out in the middle of Dirt Alley, four of them are wrestling her limbs while the other is undoing his belt buckle.

  Her screaming becomes pleading and her pleading becomes uncontrollable sobbing.

  “No, no, no…”

  I race downstairs, slip on my shoes, then grab my bow and arrows, blow through the back door and climb the ladder leading to my garage roof. Night is falling fast, as is the temperature, but my heart is kicking up a ferocious storm, pumping adrenaline into my blood, keeping me warm, making me hot with rage.

  Every one of those pukes has his eyes on the blonde. They have her pinned down by force, pinned to the ground with lust and sick intentions. One of the guys on her wrist, he’s tearing off her shirt. Another guy at her ankle has a knife and he’s cutting through the soft cotton shorts she’s wearing. When the shirt comes off, her breasts are bared. At the same time, the dirtbag who cut her shorts also cuts her underwear and all that gets pulled away, too, exposing a strip of dark pubic hair.

  “Mother of God,” I hear myself mutter.

  The lead in this pack of rapists gets down on hands and knees, planting his legs between her legs. He reaches back, drags down his pants and underwear, then nudges the insides of her thighs further apart with the outsides of his knees.

  By then I’ve grabbed an arrow, seated it and have it pulled back to the anchor point. The second I loose the arrow, another is out of the quiver, seated and drawn back. The first arrow hits its mark, sinking deep into the flesh, much farther than I imagined. I was aiming for the rapist’s tailpipe. No kidding. It went in about halfway.

  “Bullseye bitch,” I growl.

  The next two arrows are flying by the time the rapist gathers enough breath to scream. He’s fallen face-first onto the blonde. Both arrows find their marks. We’re talking head shots. The two targets go down, dead. The fourth guy is looking around then finding me.

  He’s got a gun and he’s pulling it out.

  I loose an arrow that catches him just right. His head snaps back, then rocks forward; my arrow is protruding from his left eye. He topples over in slow motion.

  The fifth guy is now running. No, he’s sprinting.

  My fifth arrow finds his back, which slows him down and wobbles him a bit, but doesn’t stop him. By now he’s too far away.

  I lob another arrow anyway. It falls short by a foot.

  Leaping off the roof, I hurry to the girl. The man with his pants down and an arrow driven halfway into his ass is howling in pain on top of her. I kick him over, but his body stops the fall halfway, and he lets out another deafening screech. Apparently the protruding arrow is serving as a kickstand. The rapist’s eyes find me. Lock in on me. They’re pumped full of fear and righteous agony and pleading.

  My eyes take in the ravaged blonde. She’s not in her head right now; she’s already disappeared by the vacant look in her eyes and the frenetic panting still going on.

  I grab an arrow, seat in, draw back and shoot it right into the eye of her attacker, the man that’s still laying halfway on her. His head jerks back, then lolls forward and to the side. He suddenly goes very still, all the fight in him gone. All the life in him…gone.

  “You okay?” I ask the girl.

  She just looks at me, unable to form words. The look in her eyes tells me no one’s home, not that I blame her. First she gets assaulted, dragged out of her house, stripped naked before five men planning on defiling her, and then she sees four of those men die all around her, one on top of her. So yeah, I don’t really blame her for being traumatized.

  Dragging the guy off her, I say, “I’ll be back to check on you. Get back inside.”

  Without waiting for a response, I sprint after the one getting away, ripping my arrow out of the fourth man’s eyeball on the way. Hauling ass down Dirt Alley, I glance down and see the fourth man’s bloody eyeball skewered on the arrow. Sickened, I drop the arrow and pick up speed.

  If the witness is going anywhere, it’s to his home base. If I find home base, I find their loot and killing him and his friends will be a formality at best.

  At the end of Dirt Alley, on Judah, I look left and then right and then decide on right. I find him rounding the corner onto 22nd a block and a half away. With the dying embers of day working to my advantage, I hang back, but not as far back as I would have had there been an abundance of light.

  I track him on 22nd, hiding behind cars and slipping into alcove driveways. I follow him the entire block up to 22nd and Irving where he disappears into the Walgreen’s.

  So Walgreen’s is home base.

  Inching up on it, I try but fail to see inside the windows. Where my eyes are rendered useless, my ears take center stage. There’s a commotion of voices coming from inside. Loud voices, authoritative voices. I hear enough to realize they’re gathering up a posse.

  Oh, crap.

  Moving like my life depends on it, because it does, I run down Irving, take the corner on to 23rd and book it home. The four dead men are where I left them and the blonde’s house is fully dark. Presuma
bly, she’s gone in to clean herself up. Good girl.

  Rushing inside my home, I grab the loaded rifle and start stuffing my pockets with shells. When I can’t get anymore in there, I scurry out back, heading toward the end of the alley furthest from where I expect trouble. There I set up a blind.

  It’s dark outside now.

  If they’re coming, hopefully they’re bringing light. Just as I’m thinking this, seven guys round the corner and start up Dirt Alley with flashlights, guns and the purposeful stride of men on a vengeance-fueled testosterone rush.

  Sighting the pack of scumbags through the high-powered Bushnell scope is easy. They crowd the dead bodies, take a moment, and then they’re all eyes in search of me.

  The guy I was tracking—the one who took an arrow in the back—he points to the garage by my house. It appears he’s talking to the one in charge, this heavily muscled beast of a man with slicked back hair. He has a gun in his hand and just one tattoo—an upside down cross over his Adam’s apple.

  I put the first round right through the tattoo.

  Then I open fire.

  I’m conscious of my ten round magazine, and this being a .22, it’s got its advantages. Bullets like these from a rifle like this won’t blow through a person as much as it’ll make a mess of things inside the body first. I’m talking about headshots. The way a bullet enters the skull with enough steam to get in but not enough punch to get out means whatever’s inside is going to be brain soup in no time flat.

  So…headshots.

  My fourth shot is a charm, but the other three men run. I shoot at them with less confidence, hitting various parts of their bodies based on how two of them are now limping instead of running.

  I use all ten of the rounds, then reload as I walk toward those who are down.

  By now the blonde is coming out on the back patio. She’s scared, peeking around the corner, wondering what the hell is going on. When she sees me, she eases outside, still overly cautious, still scared.

  “It’s okay,” I say. Thinking of what Rider said about me being soft on the thugs on Lincoln, I put a round in each of the downed men’s heads, just to be sure. It scares me that I’m not even moved by this sickening act.

  “Are they gone?” the blonde asks.

  “Yeah.”

  She approaches me like some shy school girl and says, “Thank you,” but her voice is small and the words break off easily.

  “I was scared for you,” I say.

  “I was scared for me, too,” she replies. Now we’re both looking at eight corpses. “What do we do with them?”

  For a long moment I ponder the question, then: “I have an idea.”

  Heading back inside, I open the garage door, grab the gas can and one of the dozens of lighters I’ve collected, then walk over to the bodies. She doesn’t even need to be told what to do. She just starts moving the bodies together.

  I jerk the arrows out of the heads of my victims, but leave the one in the rapist’s corn hole because…ew. I do give the shaft a thorough kick, one that’s hard enough to break the arrow in two. It’s easier to pull up his pants and not have to look at all his man bits this way.

  When we’ve got them all face up and lined side-by-side, I pour gasoline across their faces and feet, then splash the rest on their chests, stomachs and thighs. I touch the flame to the closest body and step away as the whoosh! of fire throws light into the darkness.

  “I’m Charity, by the way,” the blonde says.

  “Indigo,” I reply, not taking my eyes off the douchebag barbecue.

  She looks at me and says, “I wish we had some marshmallows right now,” and for some reason I find this funny. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in days.

  “How old are you, Charity?” I ask.

  I’m seeing her in the firelight thinking about how beautiful she is. How a little bit of the life has come back into her eyes. Not that it matters. She’s always going to relive this moment, and it’s always going to haunt her. It’s not the burning of the creeps that will bother her, it’s what they almost did to her that will be forever haunting.

  “I’m nineteen,” she says.

  “Is that your house, or your parents?”

  “Parents.”

  “Do you know where they are?” I ask.

  She doesn’t move a muscle. Not one. She just stares into the fire, watching it consume flesh and fabric, watching it turning eight faces into eight overcooked pot roasts. Eventually this will be nothing more than an assemblage of bones in mountains of ash.

  “My parents are missing, too,” I finally say.

  We don’t talk for awhile. Finally she says, “Is your water out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “I have stores of it if you need some,” I offer, not that I want to use any of my spare water right now, not unless I absolutely have to.

  “Thanks, but I’m gonna drain my water heater and toilet tanks. That should give me plenty for now.”

  “You’re just going to drink it like that? Right from the tanks?”

  “No, I’ll boil it.”

  I think about this for a second, then ask, “Where did you learn that?”

  “A friend of mine was a prepper. We all thought he was a nut job, sort of ousted him from our little group. He’s from Idaho, so it all fit the bill. Now I feel stupid for not listening to him more. It’s just…this kind of thing…it shouldn’t be possible.”

  “I know.”

  After that the fire begins to settle down and the smell of cooked meat becomes a touch nauseating. She finally turns and gives me a hug, then says, “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you earlier. Thank you again for saving me.”

  “Come to my house anytime you need anything, or just to hang out, if you want.”

  She smiles then nods, her eyes misting over. It’s the first time I actually felt halfway decent since this whole thing began. I watch her return to her house, clomping over the downed fence, then locking the door even though it looks kicked in.

  I make a mental note to help her fix that, or see if she wants to move into my fortress/armory in the morning. I don’t want to be too forward since right now she’s the only chance I have at making friends, but I don’t want her to think I don’t care either.

  Ugh.

  11

  My nights are chock full of nightmares. Even more so now. With the world descending into madness, I’m redefining the meaning of my existence, my life. I am an adult. A loner. Mine is an unstable world overrun by hostile forces and there are no guarantees in this life. There are no cops, no military presence, not even FEMA to balance out this precarious equation.

  Then again, what could they really do against the machines? Against this society that’s gone rogue and seems to celebrate lawlessness?

  Cities are being attacked all over. It could be two cities; it could be all cities. The unknown presents its own set of problems, of terrors. The fact that San Francisco continues to suffer such long destructive days without any outside aid is proof that as a city, we are also on our own.

  With each sunset my resolve to survive grows stronger, more powerful; my emotions, however, continue to harden, to winnow away into something cold and callous. There is a drive I feel forming in me, this cruel offshoot of myself that’s needing to become more self-sustaining, more lethal, something vastly more…primal.

  Crawling out of bed, I walk to the window, look down upon the row of ash and bones and know that I have changed. That I’m firmly on this dark path. That my life won’t end with retirement as much as it might end with brutality and a bullet.

  I eat the bare minimum, drink enough water to chase away any concerns of dehydration, then grab my gun and head next door to check on Charity. If there’s any hope that some shred of humanity is still left inside me, it’s evident in my concern for my neighbor.

  I stalk through the smoke tinged air and the noise of the war raging between man and machine. This destruction is steadily encroaching
upon the entire city, looming ever closer to our little corner of the bay area landscape. Right now, on these outskirts of town, the threat is primarily human. Later, when the threat of machine supersedes the current terror posed by man, I will adapt and overcome. As of this very moment, however, all I care about is my new friend. My only friend.

  I knock on the front door and wait. Inside, I hear something.

  A smile curls my lips as I think about me and Charity combining forces. I really want her to move in because in the climate of survival, two heads are better than one. Plus I could use the company.

  Footsteps approach the front door; locks are disengaged. It’s only when the front door opens that the most minuscule of noises sparks a current of fear in me.

  It’s a noise coming from behind me.

  Standing in the doorway, however, is an ugly man with a long scar pulled across his face. It starts at his hairline, drags down over his eyebrow then cuts a swath across his cheek, lips and chin in an unsightly, jagged line. To make matters worse, this disgusting creature with a toothy, sadistic grin had the scar tattooed over. The ink turned what would have been a white line into a giant Frankenstein stitch, almost like these fake stitches are the only things keeping his real head from opening like a split watermelon.

  The second I go for my Glock, something from behind cracks my skull so hard, it’s lights out.

  * * *

  I wake up in a chair, ropes digging into my body. Where am I? The world can’t seem to strike a balance, and there’s some disconnect between the waking world and me, a disconnect that feels like an open chasm. A small moan escapes me. It’s the throbbing in my head and the sound of screaming and crying that finally brings me around.

  Charity is on the ground in front of me. She’s sprawled out on her back, a long red line trailing from a punched eye, a rose shaped smear of red sitting on a punched lip.

  Her clothes are torn, but they’re still on, which makes this groggy, still not quite together version of me sigh with a small measure of relief.